Archive for the ‘Lime Rock’ tag

It was one of the most immortal drives in racing history, and the car and champion who combined to achieve it will be reunited at Connecticut’s historic Lime Rock Park during its 33rd annual Historic Festival over Labor Day weekend. The champion is Sir Stirling Moss, and the car is number 722, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR that Sir Stirling shared with the journalist Denis Jenkinson during the 1955 running of the Mille Miglia. Their winning drive is considered one of the greatest moments in sports car history.

Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson in the 300 SLR at the 1955 Mille Miglia.

The 300 SLR will be displayed from the collection of the Mercedes-Benz factory, as will a second car, a W196 Grand Prix car of the same type that Juan Manuel Fangio and Sir Stirling used to finish one-two in the Formula 1 championship standings, also in 1955. The cars will be driven around Lime Rock by Sir Stirling and by Jochen Mass, the official driver for Mercedes-Benz Classic, who won Le Mans in 1989 aboard a Sauber-Mercedes C9, on his way to becoming the winningest driver in Group C history.

The Historic Festival will run from September 3 through 7, and more details can be found at LimeRock.com. If you want to roar some more, it’s not far from Lime Rock to Hemmings Motor News’ semi-annual Musclepalooza extravaganza at Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, New York, which takes place on the Sunday of that same weekend. Stop by!

In 1966, the Sports Car Club of America debuted the Trans-American Sedan Championship, soon shortened to the Trans-Am Series, as a manufacturer’s championship for race-prepared sedans. Consisting of under-2.0-liter and over-2.0-liter classes (run simultaneously), the series promoted wheel-to-wheel racing of both compact European sedans and larger American cars. Within a few years, however, the true stars of the series had become the pony cars, with each race generally featuring epic battles among the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro, Plymouth ‘Cuda, Dodge Challenger and the AMC Javelin. This Labor Day weekend, vintage Trans-Am cars will be featured as part of Lime Rock’s annual Historic Festival, and the gathering promises to deliver the largest field of authentic Trans-Am cars to the East coast since the glory days of the series.

Most agree that the “Golden Era” of the Trans-Am Series stretched from 1968-1971, as manufacturer involvement ensured relatively close racing. Though Mark Donohue was a dominant force in the Penske Racing Camaro Z/28 (and later, the Penske Racing AMC Javelin), the Mustang Boss 302s driven by the likes of Parnelli Jones and George Follmer were generally in contention for the win, while the Plymouth ‘Cudas and Dodge Challengers (driven by names like Swede Savage and Sam Posey) ensured that there was no such thing as an easy win for any driver or manufacturer. In 1967, the over 2.0-liter championship went to Ford (thanks to driver Jerry Titus), while Mark Donohue took the championship for Chevrolet in 1968 and 1969. Parnelli Jones would earn another victory for Ford in 1970 (besting Donohue’s Camaro Penske Racing AMC Javelin), but Donohue would take the 1971 championship for American Motors.

While West Coast Trans-Am reunions are not uncommon, large-scale reunions on the East Coast don’t happen with any regularity. For its Labor Day Historic Festival, Lime Rock promises to have some 30 cars on hand (running for the “Posey Plate” award), including 12 Chevrolet Camaros, eight Mustang Boss 302s, five additional Ford Mustangs, a Mercury Cougar, an AMC Javelin, a Dodge Challenger and even a Ford Falcon Sprint from the first year of the Trans-Am series. While all are authentic Trans-Am cars (not later recreations to “period-correct” specifications), some are particularly well-known: Mark Donohue’s Team Penske Camaro and AMC Javelin will be on hand, as will Sam Posey’s Dodge Challenger and George Follmer’s Boss 302 Mustang. If you missed the chance to see these cars run back in the day, piloted by legendary drivers, this is the next best thing.

The 31st running of the Lime Rock Historic Festival will take place from Friday, August 30 through Monday, September 2. In addition to full days of racing on Saturday and Monday, the schedule includes a swap meet and a “Sunday in the Park” concours (because noise restrictions prohibit racing on Sundays). Other racing groups participating in this year’s event include road-going sports and GT cars (contesting for the Lime Rock Cup); early sports and racing cars (contesting for the VSCCA bowl); Formula Juniors (contesting for the Anglo-Italian Ingot); mid-century sports and racing cars (contesting for the Chairman’s Mug); Formula Libre single-seaters (contesting for the Skip’s Challenge Award); big-bore production sports and GT cars (contesting for Mick’s Magnum); modified production cars (contesting for the Litchfield Cup); and post-1965 sports racing cars, (contesting for the Timolat Trophy).

Hide the women and kids: I’m coming to Vermont to help out with covering the monster that has become Musclepalooza, and the promising but unknown entity that is whatever we’re calling the event at Lime Rock on Sunday.

Quite by coincidence, Memorial Day weekend at Lime Rock is the 10th anniversary of the short-lived North American Touring Car Championship; I was there for the debut event and still have my poster signed by all the drivers including Randy Pobst, David Donohue and Dominic Dobson among others. Loved the racing but touring cars just never took off here; didn’t help that the only manufacturer officially involved was Dodge. NATCC had better racing than NASCAR, I thought, in bite-sized sprints, and in cars that actually resembled factory vehicles (well, more than the templated-to-death things that we still call “stock cars” do). Shoot, at least the touring cars maintained front-wheel-drive! I still have my Lime Rock ’96 T-shirt too. I’m surprised it still fits. That weekend was a highlight of what was otherwise a very low 1996.

If it ever stops raining, we’ll be photographing Dean Cusano’s Jaguar XJS for Sports & Exotic. We first saw him at a track day at Lime Rock last year, and all we knew about the car then was that it was cool.

We were in touch with Dean over the winter, and we gradually learned that this track excursion wasn’t the big cat’s usual haunt: What we’d latched onto was one of the fastest Jaguar slalom cars in the country, not to mention one of the baddest-looking. Then Dean sent us this video taken by Dave Herrick on the weekend of May 6, and we were totally blown away. Note: This file is about 4MB–if you’re on dialup, you may want to wait until you’re at work to watch, and we recommend playing it LOUD.

UPDATE: The story ran in the August issue; see many more photos & read the story here.